


The Only House That's Not On Fire (Yet)

by sunlightCatcher



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Arson, Based on a Tumblr Post, F/M, book canon and netflix canon mixed together like a chefs salad because i do what i want, denouement backstory, lemony being a pedant, neil cicierega references because i cant help myself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 01:01:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17971475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunlightCatcher/pseuds/sunlightCatcher
Summary: In which the secret of Dewey Denouement's existence extends to his brothers.





	The Only House That's Not On Fire (Yet)

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey, just putting it out there that this fic would not exist without tumblr user ceruleanvulpine, who made an excellent post describing a scenario in which frank and ernest are unaware that dewey lives in their basement 
> 
> also heavily inspired by/named after the only house that's not on fire yet by lemon demon, though i am hesitant to call it a "songfic" because it isnt structured after the song

It has been a while since Dewey Denouement has been okay. When Kit tells him that she must travel to the Caligari Carnival to find the sugar bowl, he knows that she hears the loneliness in his voice when he says, "Give Olivia my regards." She apologises, and then she leaves.

  
When he was younger, he loved the idea of spending his days alone in a secret library. VFD sold him this fantasy and he fell for it like an idiot child, or a regular child who happens to like libraries. Some things, like fruit kebabs and harpoon guns, are only hypothetically good. It is incredibly lonely to live in secret. Many years ago, when Ernest began setting fires instead of putting them out, VFD had sent Dewey secret instructions concealed in a children's holiday story about a potato pancake.

  
Perhaps, he often thought, if he hadn't followed those instructions, he could have saved Frank and Ernest from the fire-fighters and the fire-starters respectively. Now Frank believes that Ernest set the fire, and Ernest believes that Frank put it out, and they both believe that the other's action is what killed Dewey Denouement. None of these assumptions are correct. There are two people who know the truth: Kit and her brother. And Lemony Snicket, of course, is dead. D is for Dewey, who is Desolate.

  
Frank and Ernest are enemies now, but each needs the other to keep the hotel safe. They sealed off one entrance to the library after the fire, but neither was quite familiar enough with the Dewey decimal system to notice the missing room 135, and sometimes on the darkest and most desolate of nights Dewey wonders if they have forgotten him in the same way, and before he falls asleep the last thought to echo through his mind is, "Do Frank and Ernest miss me as terribly as I miss them?"

  
When Dewey is in the hotel, disguised as either Frank or Ernest, he is bound by VFD to stay away from the real Frank and Ernest. All three are such creatures of routine that their paths have not crossed since they were nineteen and Dewey ran into Frank on the way to the restroom, then Ernest while tending to a guest, and narrowly avoided being spotted by both of them at the cinema, when he took Kit to a movie he assumed his brothers wouldn't want to see.

  
The dreary, disillusioned and dreadfully desolate days of Dewey Denouement begin to come to an end when Kit returns, along with the three Baudelaire children. She drives up in her taxi, looking quite distraught and pregnant, but radiant nonetheless. Once the children are relatively safe in the care of Frank and Ernest, he meets her in the garden. She informs him of two things.

  
The first is that Lemony Snicket is alive. He is about to react with anger, but he meets Kit's eyes and it dawns on him that he can't run his mouth about brothers who fake their own deaths, as much as he would like to. Hypocrisy isn't becoming of the whole classy-yet-sexy secret librarian thing he's got going on.

  
The second is that Kit is fairly certain she will have a daughter. The conversation goes something like this:

  
"I want to name her Beatrice," Kit says. "Lemony, who is alive and currently in my taxi, suggested it."

  
"That's an excellent name. I do miss Bea--Lemony's alive?"

  
Kit nods. "He appeared in the back of my taxi. I'm feeling a chef's salad of emotions. Brothers shouldn't fake their deaths. Jacques and I threw such a lovely funeral, and the man wasn't even dead."

  
"It has dawned on me," Dewey says. "that I can't run my mouth about brothers who fake their own deaths, as much as I would like to."

  
"Hypocrisy isn't becoming of the whole classy-yet-sexy secret librarian thing you've got going on," Kit agrees. "I have to go now. I'll be back soon. Give Frank my regards."

  
Part of Dewey feels cold when Kit leaves. He remembers when the goodbye was "Give Frank and Ernest my regards." The difference is less present than it once was, but nostalgia is a cruel torture.

  
And then Kit leaves again, for what neither of them knows is the last time. Dewey makes his way back to reception, where he greets the Baudelaires.

  
"Are you Frank or Ernest?" Sunny Baudelaire asks.

  
"That's an interesting question," Dewey says. What he means to say is, "That's the wrong question," but a non-answer will suffice for now. No doubt his brothers are being equally cryptic. Sometimes, the punchline is that there is no punchline.

  
When he has attended to all of the invisible duties that keep the hotel running, he returns to his sub-sub-library and peruses class 000. Normally instinct would take him to 020 for library science, but today he finds himself at 098. His hand hovers over an old, thick book, and he is about to take it from the shelf when he hears the sound of the elevator doors opening. Kit must have come back much sooner than expected. Only it's not Kit. It's Violet, Klaus and Sunny Baudelaire.

  
"You're not Kit," he says, stating the obvious. In return, the Baudelaires state the slightly less obvious about him: that he is neither Frank nor Ernest.

  
He explains that the Hotel Denouement is as much of a library as it is a hotel, and leads them through a secret entrance to a years-old tunnel system. He takes them up a staircase and out in front of Hotel Denouement's iconic pond.

  
"Sebald," says Sunny, which means something like, "I'm literally standing at the edge of a pond."

  
And then: Count Olaf. Esmé Squalor. A harpoon gun. A surprised banker. You know how this one ends. A night at the opera. _La Forza del Destino_. D is for Dewey, who is Dead.

  
"Kit--"

 

* * *

  
Frank is in the lobby when he hears it.

  
"The manager's been shot!"

  
His heart stops. _Ernest._

  
The schism, the fires, VFD, it all fades to background noise. That's his brother.

* * *

  
Ernest is in the garden when he hears it.

  
"The manager's been shot!"

  
He can't breathe. _Frank._

  
The schism, the sugar bowl, VFD, none of it matters now. That's his _fucking_ brother.

 

* * *

  
Frank and Ernest rush to the pond, where the distressed banker is coughing and it is then that they see each other.

  
"Frank!" Ernest calls.

  
"Ernest!" Frank replies. And for a moment they are just relieved to see each other alive and well.

  
It takes a minute to hit them, but when it does it hits them like a truck.

  
"That's impossible!" Frank says. "Dewey died in the fire you set when we were fifteen!"

  
"I told you, I didn't set that fire, and I don't know who did. But I do know that when you ran in to put it out, you trapped him in the library."

  
"That's... not how the Vigorous Fire Defence works, E. And regardless, I didn't activate it. Someone else did."

  
Frank and Ernest look below them, at the body drowned in the pond.

  
"If you didn't set the fire..."

  
"If you didn't put it out..."

 

* * *

 

It is the dead of night. Twelve-year-old Dewey Denouement waits for his brothers to fall asleep before leaving his bed. He shares a room with Frank, while Ernest sleeps in the next room. Frank and Ernest aren't speaking to each other right now, not since their fight two days ago. It should have blown over by now.

  
He does what VFD instructs and heads downstairs to the library, where he meets two other siblings.

  
"Are you sure you want to do this?" Lemony Snicket asks, by way of a greeting. "Faking one's own death is rarely a good idea, which is why I would never do it."

  
"That's the wrong question," Dewey replies, because he is very sure that he doesn't want to do this, but when VFD asks one to dance, one dances.

  
Lemony sighs. "Why does everyone keep--you know what, nevermind. How can I help?"

  
Dewey drops the match. "Run."

  
Ernest Denouement wakes up to the smell of smoke. He immediately runs downstairs. The library is in flames. He doesn't know where Frank and Dewey are, but he's too scared to look for them. He runs outside, away from the inferno.

  
"Ernest!" Kit Snicket yells. She is outside his house, which is not unusual, and Lemony is there too, which _is_ unusual.

  
"What is going on?" Ernest yells over the sound of the fire, which for the first time in a while is not an enjoyable sound.

  
"Your home appears to be on fire," Lemony says, unhelpfully.

  
"It would be in everyone's best interest to activate the Vigorous Fire Defence," Kit says, more helpfully.

  
"Which is located in the kitchen," Ernest says. "I'm afraid I can't go back inside. I'm sorry."

  
"What about Frank and Dewey?" Kit asks. "You would leave them in there to die of smoke inhalation or worse out of fear?"

  
"Don't you think I would go back if I could?" Ernest snaps. "I have seen fires within fires and I have set some of them too, but I am far too afraid to put this one out, and more importantly I am afraid of what my associates would think if I did."

  
"Your associates are villains," Lemony argues. "And most of them haven't read Anna Karenina, which is probably why they're villains."

  
"I'm not going to unpack all that right now," says Ernest. "because my house is on fire and my brothers are still in there. I'm not even going to ask why you're here."

  
"Well, you see--" Kit begins, but she is interrupted by a loud hiss as the second Denouement fire is extinguished. Frank Denouement rushes out of the front door, covered in sweat and pale as a ghost.

  
"Ernest!" Frank calls.

  
"Frank!" Ernest calls.

  
Frank stops to catch his breath. "What--" he begins, but the sudden need to intake more oxygen interrupts him.

  
"Where's Dewey?" Ernest demands of his brother.

  
Frank scowls. "That's it? 'Where's Dewey?' You're not worried about the fact that I just escaped a burning building?"

  
"Formerly burning building," Lemony corrects.

  
Frank ignores Lemony's interjection. "You've really done it this time, Ernest. You're not who I thought you were."

  
"Frank," Ernest says, his voice shaking ever so slightly. "I'm not behind this."

  
"Don't bother, I don't believe you," Frank says sharply, and then he turns to the Snickets. "And you two, why are you here? No, forget I asked, I'm going back to get Dewey."

  
"No!" Lemony yells. "I mean, you've been through enough. Sit tight, I'll be back soon." And Lemony strolls calmly into the formerly-on-fire building.

  
"We smelled smoke," Kit explains to Frank and Ernest. "And where there's smoke, there's either fire or a smoke machine, and both of those things are very dangerous in the wrong hands."

  
Both Ernest and Frank watched the house, waiting for Lemony to return with Dewey. But when Lemony did finally return, he was alone.

  
"Where is he?" Frank and Ernest ask simultaneously, before glaring at each other.

  
Lemony refuses to meet either brother's eye. "I'm so sorry, Denouements. By the time I got there, it was too late."

 

* * *

  
Many years later, the two living Denouement brothers talk honestly for the first time since they were sixteen.

  
"What if," Ernest begins, choosing his next words carefully. "we didn't set fires, literal or figurative, and we didn't put them out either?"

  
Frank nods. "We've seen far more than our fair share of fire."

  
"The Snickets knew," Ernest says. "and Kit still had the audacity to call me a coward."

  
"The Snickets let me hate you for all those years," Frank says. "knowing full well that you were innocent. Ernest, I'm so sorry. I trusted the wrong people and you suffered for it."

  
"We were young," Ernest says. "VFD created the divide between us, the way throwing a rock in a pond creates ripples, or throwing a rock at a French philosopher creates a brief feeling of vindication."

  
"Did it? Or did it just bring to the surface what was already within us?" Frank looks into the murky waters of the pond. "I wanted to the right thing. After the fire that killed our parents, I saw an organisation that fights literal and figurative fire must be noble. I obeyed them without question."

  
Ernest joins his brother in staring down at the place where, just last night, Dewey Denouement perished. "As did I, for a while. But I began to resent VFD. They didn't care about the lives of people, they cared about keeping their secrets and making their pretentious literary and cultural references. So I joined the other side, the side that starts fires. And they cared even less, but I didn't see that until it was too late."

  
"Until Count Olaf?" Frank asks.

 

"You know I'm a coward," Ernest says. "I convinced myself that I could be on his side, so to speak, without being on his side."

  
"You did a great number of wicked things."

  
"And I have a lot of regrets."

  
"This isn't your fault, Ernest. Not entirely, at least."

  
"No, I think it is at least partially my fault."

  
"I failed to stop Violet Baudelaire from giving a harpoon gun to an unpleasant girl on the roof. Perhaps you poured the gasoline, but I struck the match."

  
"That's not a fair comparison."

  
Frank sighs. "Perhaps it doesn't matter whose fault it was. Casting blame didn't do us any good before. Both sides of the schism are as wicked as the other is noble, which is to say that it depends entirely on the individual."

  
"Before the fire, when we were sixteen," Ernest says. "Dewey told me that he didn't think I was wicked enough to switch sides. That was the last thing he said to me."

  
Frank goes quiet.

  
"What are you thinking?" Ernest asks.

  
"I don't remember the last thing Dewey said to me," Frank says quietly. "I was half asleep and he was talking and I wasn't quite listening."

  
The water of the pond is still, but the brothers cannot see down far enough to find the library that they now know is hidden below. The archives that they had each been searching for all this time, right in front of their eyes if only they had looked hard enough. The same can also be said for Dewey.

  
"I feel strangely regular," Ernest says.

  
"Me too," Frank says. "I'm not sure if I prefer it to the usual bizarre."

 

* * *

 

_Oh! I just thought of how to change all the hate_

  
_Into love with the old switcheroo_

  
_Dancing in my déjà vu_

  
_You'll be dancing too_

  
_When I escape at last_

  
_When the future is the past_

  
_But something keeps me as a pet_

  
_The only house that's not on fire yet_

**Author's Note:**

> wow ok who told me i could write things  
> and yes i am very much in the camp of "vfd is full of shit and they kidnapped the fucking denouements so if ernest wants to be a little bit evil thats fair enough, yeehaw"  
> in the books the worst thing he does is like, tell klaus to hang bird paper out the window and iirc that doesnt even work  
> \+ follow me on tumblr @hellboundheartbreaker (main) @snicketsqualor (snicketverse)


End file.
